


The Empty Place

by NettleTea



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Demon AU, Eventual Smut, M/M, Purgatory, Slow Burn, demon!mccree, human!Hanzo, it's the same time period but overwatch doesn't exist, major character death - haha just kidding he's already dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-10 18:13:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NettleTea/pseuds/NettleTea
Summary: Hanzo is dead. And yet, here he is, walking around in some strange emptiness, some twisted half-life.And there is a demon, with a wide smile and a stupid hat. Surely this must be Hell.





	1. Chapter 1

Hanzo awoke with a sharp gasp, and immediately every fiber of his being screamed: Wrong.

His breathing felt wrong. As he lay on his back, staring at a grey ceiling above him, his breath felt sharp and uneven, but offered him no relief. It felt as though he had just begun to hold his breath: Not unbearable or desperate, but vaguely uncomfortable. No amount of controlled breathing would make the sensation go away, so after a minute he forced himself to focus on other things.

The second thing that was wrong was the bed he was lying in. A single bed, fitted with a white sheet, no blankets or pillows. Clean, but not soft. It didn't feel like a hospital bed, but Hanzo had the unshakable feeling that he shouldn't be lying down at all. Hadn't he just been on his feet? Swift movement, adrenaline, quick thinking- he could have sworn that a moment ago, he had been active. Running maybe, shooting, diving for cover.

But the memories were lost. Everything felt hazy, like he was trying to remember a dream. He couldn't even make himself feel frustrated; he just felt dulled and dumb.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The room he was in was small and dimly but evenly lit, though he could find no source of light. Besides the bed, there was a small bedside table and a chair, both a muted white. The only source of color in the room was on the nightstand: In a white vase was a piece of green celery.

Hanzo stared at it, but it didn't do anything, so he scooted another foot away from it and stood. 

The floor was bare greyish wood, and there was a grey door across the way. When his feet first hit the ground, he was startled to note that he was wearing shoes- a full outfit, actually, consisting of slacks without pockets and a plain t-shirt, partially showcasing the tattoo that ran down his arm. The entire outfit was white, and Hanzo could say with complete honesty that it was the most boring outfit he had ever seen.

He was sensing a theme around here.

He paced the room for a moment, testing out his body. He didn't feel injured or lethargic, but nor did he feel energized. He just moved, and still his breathing felt like nothing. Like there was no air, but it wasn't important. For science, he held his breath, and then stopped after two minutes because it was beginning to creep him out.

There was nothing for it. Striding across the room, he flung open the door- he half expected it to be locked, but it felt like throwing around air- and was greeted by an equally grey hallway. The hallway, he determined, was pointless: His was one of two doors, on the side of the hall rather than on the end, which contained nothing but a blank wall. The opposite end had another door.

He felt a spark of irritation, which he clung to, because it felt like his first real emotion since he had arrived. He moved quickly to the other door, and the walk, which couldn't have been more than twenty feet, felt like two hundred. But he reached it at last, and he threw it open with as much force as he could muster. It let out a very unsatisfying 'tunk' sound as it hit the wall.

Hanzo was greeted with a view of the outside, which felt even more wrong than the room had before.

Before him was a grey porch, and below the porch the ground was sandy and grassy, though the color of the grass was muted. The land around him stretched out into the distance, flat and emotionless, until it disappeared into a dark horizon. The sky was utterly black, devoid of celestial bodies of any kind, though it didn't feel like night; the landscape was adequately lit, though it brought no life with it.

To his right was built the most ridiculous thing yet: A little old western town, barely six buildings on either side of a street that wasn't really there. It looked like an abandoned movie set, like someone had started to build and then had ran out of money and forgotten about it. There was a saloon, a church, a store, and a few buildings that were blank.

He stepped cautiously out of the house and turned to look at it. It looked more modern than the rest of the town, like some kind of 1990s suburban house. There were more rooms seen from the outside than there had been in the interior.

It was then that Hanzo realized he was dead.

It didn't surprise him, really, but it did anger him. He had always assumed death would be a relief, a dark and blissful end to life's troubles. He hadn't believed in an afterlife, just the eternal sleep. This wasn't right, this haunting twilight zone. It didn't even have the decency to be a proper Hell; it was just lifeless, bleak, and thoroughly depressing.

And he was all alone. There were no people, no animals, no signs of life whatsoever. His only consolation was that, even in the company of himself, his thoughts and memories no longer wore him down. He could hardly remember his life before, and the pain of the past had been scrubbed away to be replaced by a kind of indifference.

He stared at the town for a while. He felt, without any reason, that he was supposed to go in. Explore. Search for something. The feeling grew stronger the longer he stood still.

It was the last straw. "I don't take orders," he snapped at no one, and he turned on his heel and stomped away into the endless prairie.

 

He couldn't say how long he walked. Hours, possible. Days, years. There was no way to know. He didn't get tired or hungry, and there was no sun in the black sky to tell him what time it was, though the grey prairie was always illuminated by an invisible light. He walked and he walked, his stupid white shoes never getting dusty, his throat never dry, his lungs filling uselessly with nothing at all.

Slowly, the desire to enter the town faded, until he was empty again. And then he stopped, and turned around, and looked back.

The town was gone, not even visible in the distance. All around him was nothing, nothing but short grasslands. Not completely black and white, but like someone had turned the saturation completely down.

Before, he had enjoyed the silence, but he supposed he had never experienced true silence. There had always been something; a bird's call, the hum of a computer, the sound of footsteps. Even his own breathing and footfalls were muted, as though his hearing had been damaged. There was truly nothing.

"Well, now. Gone and gotten yourself turned around, have you?" drawled a voice from behind him.

Hanzo whirled, his hands instinctively to draw his bow, though of course it was gone. Before him stood a man- a cowboy. _Ridiculous_ , was Hanzo's first thought, surprising even himself with the contempt behind the word.

And yet, he _was_ ridiculous. The outfit looked like something you might have bought in a costume shop: Good quality, but impractical and idiotic. He had the full cowboy getup: Boots, spurs, hat. In contrast to the grey lands around him, he was very brown and unbearably scruffy looking. The only bit of color on him was the absurd serape he wore on his shoulders; the red was so rich, it hurt Hanzo's eyes.

Hanzo also noted the holster at his hip. Not good.

"What do you want?" he demanded, his voice more hoarse than he had expected.

The man only grinned, and spread his hands. "What, can't a man make pleasant conversation 'round these parts? It's not often I get company, least of all such _mighty fine_ company as yourself."

Hanzo felt his blood begin to boil. The cowboy radiated an air of lazy confidence, defying the unsettling nature of the landscape around them. Everything about the man rubbed him the wrong way. "Clearly this is Hell," he snapped, though the man reacted not at all to his venom, "if I'm to be stuck here with you."

The man chuckled, warm and throaty. "This ain't Hell," he said, sticking his thumbs in his belt. "But you're a bright one. Name's McCree- Jesse, if you're feeling personable. What should I call you?"

"I do not wish you to call me anything. Go away and leave me in peace." Ducking his head, Hanzo strode roughly past the man, but when he looked up again, the cowboy was standing some six feet in front of him again, grinning like he had just won the jackpot.

Hanzo glared at him, but even as he did so, his blood ran cold. McCree's eyes were black- not just a little, but black all over, the darkness swallowing up his entire eyeball. It robbed him of his humanity, made his grin look feral and twisted.

"I'm not leaving you, Hanzo," he said, the warmth and welcome of his voice feeling suddenly empty with the addition of his terrifying eyes. "You're mine now. I'm your partner. It's part of the arrangement."

"I have made no arrangement," Hanzo said, balling his fists to fight back the shiver at the sound of his name on the creature's lips. "Do not call me by my name, I did not give it to you. Whatever you are, I don't want you here."

"Now that's where you're wrong," the thing- McCree- said. "You're in an arrangement whether you want it or not, and you'll want me here. Without me, you'll be all alone for eternity- and that don't sound very pleasant, does it?"

"This is Hell, isn't it?" Hanzo spat. He felt cornered, vulnerable. There was nowhere to escape to, and no way to defend himself against the soulless gunslinger. "You are a demon, sent to torment me."

McCree hummed, and held up a finger. "No..." Another finger. "Yes..." A third. "Maybe."

"What?"

"No, yes, and maybe. In response to your questions, darling. In that order."

It took Hanzo a moment to work out what he meant. "You... _are_ a demon?" he asked finally.

McCree tipped his hat. "At your service."

"So I am dead."

"Sounds like."

"And stuck here with you."

"Now, don't fly off the handle. I'm told I ain't the worst company in the world." The cowboy waggled his eyebrows, which only looked wrong with the dark eyes.

"Who told you that?"

"Well..."

Hanzo scoffed, and folded his arms, turning partially away. "Where are we, then?"

McCree hummed, and looked around as if taking the place in for the first time. "I reckon you'd call it purgatory, though I don't rightly know if that's the correct word. Think of it as an in between place. When good people do bad things, they end up here."

Hanzo swallowed thickly. "Forever?" The idea of staying in this horrible lifeless plan of existence was somehow worse than if he were being tortured for eternity. At least then he would have something to focus on besides the hollowness inside.

"Shoot no. Leastways, not usually. You're here to work something out, I reckon. Most people are. Got to set down their rage and problems before they're ready for better things."

Hanzo narrowed his eyes. "I have nothing to atone for."

"Sure you don't."

"Do not take that tone with me."

"Wasn't taking a 'tone,' honest," said the cowboy, holding up his hands. Hanzo had never heard someone take more of a tone in his life.

"Then why are you here?" he spat, becoming angrier the more amused the demon looked.

"Well, now. To help you along, of course." It was the most blatant lie anyone had ever said to his face before, and the demon seem to know it by the smile he gave him. 

"Oh yes? _How_ , exactly?"

"I guess we'll find out," McCree drawled, unhelpful.

"Fine." Turning his back and staring straight ahead, Hanzo began to walk once more. This time, the demon didn't appear in front of him, but he could hear the annoying jingle of his spurs as he followed a short distance behind.

The worst part was, Hanzo thought as he walked towards the empty horizon, it was nice to hear something again.


	2. Chapter 2

Time was impossible to measure here.

Sometimes Hanzo would stop and sit, not because he was tired but because it was something different. McCree would lounge beside him comfortably, smoking a cigar that glowed dimly but smelled of nothing, and Hanzo resented how easily the demon fit into the world around them. Every action the demon performed, from the random bursts of humming to the swishing of his serape, seemed perfectly calculated to dig under his skin.

 _Was_ it preferable to being alone in this grey expanse? Hanzo wasn't sure.

They had walked in relative silence for- he wasn't certain, millions of steps- when the demon started humming again and Hanzo's control finally snapped. "Will you not BE QUIET?" he snarled, rounding on McCree.

McCree had the audacity to smile, a slow thing that showed off the crow's feet around his black eyes. "Beg your pardon, Hanzo. Just thought this place could use a little noise, is all. I gotta say, you're one of the least curious people I've ever worked with."

Against his better judgement, Hanzo was offended. "What do you mean?" he responded, folding his arms stiffly across his chest.

"Exactly what I said. Most folks, they come here and they've got loads of questions. About me, about this place, about themselves." He waved his left hand vaguely in Hanzo's direction, and Hanzo realized for the first time that it was metal. His eyes followed it, and McCree noticed. "Oh, this? Funny thing, ain't it?"

Hanzo huffed, and didn't take the bait. "You just want to talk about yourself."

"Maybe I do, but ain't that better than all this going nowhere? I don't reckon we'll get anywhere at all, at this rate."

"What do you mean by that?" Hanzo asked again.

"I mean you can't get any farther on your journey if you don't aim in the right direction."

Hanzo bristled. "Do you mean to tell me we have been walking in the wrong direction this entire time?" he asked, striding forward and jabbing a finger at the demon's chest. And here, for the first time as well, he realized how tall McCree was. Hanzo wasn't small by any means, but the demon must have had at least six inches on him. He refused to let it lessen the effect of his intimidation.

But McCree, of course, was unaffected. He didn't smile, but he didn't look ruffled either, and he shrugged in a way that made Hanzo's blood boil. "In a manner of speaking," he admitted, without remorse. "But getting around here- it's more a state of mind than anything.

"Some people get it like that," he added, and snapped his fingers for emphasis. "Whizzing around like they own the place. They never stay long. You, now, you're still back in that room for all the good you've done yourself."

Hanzo narrowed his eyes, let the contempt he felt for the creature show in his voice. "Where are these 'other people' you speak of?"

McCree turned his head, survey the landscape as though he expected to see these aforementioned others in the never-ending prairie around them. "Oh, I reckon we'll run into some eventually."

"And they know how to get out?"

A chuckle from the vile being. "Of course not. No one knows. They just go, when they're ready. Takes some hardly any time at all. Takes some hundreds of years."

_"What?"_

The demon leveled his black gaze on Hanzo, and he found himself taking a step back without meaning to. "Takes some hundreds of years," McCree repeated softly. "Now, I reckon you don't want to hang around me that long, do you?"

"Why must I 'hang around' you at all?"

McCree let out a long sigh. "You sure are a prickly one," he said, as though he were addressing a particularly stubborn child. "Here now, how 'bout we take a little breather, and I tell you all about you and me and this place we're in?" To emphasize his point, he lowered himself onto the ground with a grunt. The cigar he'd been smoking not a minute before vanished so suddenly that Hanzo stood there blinking stupidly after it for longer than he cared.

His first reaction was to rebel, to turn and to keep walking into infinity as though it promised some kind of progression. Leave the fool creature, let him sit out his days smoking his ridiculous cigar and talking to himself. It wouldn't work, of course, he _knew_ it wouldn't work, but every once of him wanted to run against the grain, to force this place to bend to _his_ will and not the other way around.

The demon stared up at him with a quiet sort of expectation, though when it came to it Hanzo realized he could be merely facing him and looking someplace else. The black, pupil-less eyes were like sunglasses in that regard, made it impossible to know what he was seeing.

Then McCree patted the ground beside him as though he were offering up a cushy chair. "We've got all the time in time itself, but I ain't getting any younger," he said.

Hanzo knelt a few feet from him with a huff. A twinge of embarrassment sounded in his brain as he did so- he realized he was acting like the petulant child McCree supposed him to be. But then, he rationalized, he had just found out he was dead. It would throw anyone off. 

"Well?" he demanded of McCree, once he was seated.

"Well," McCree echoed. "If you're wondering why you hate me so much, it's because it's supposed to be that way."

"I bed your pardon?"

"Begging your pardon, but why don't you stop interrupting unless you've got something useful to add?" the demon interjected mildly, and Hanzo sent him the most venomous glare he could muster (but acquiesced). "I was saying, it's supposed to be this way. Everyone who comes here, they get someone who plays off of them in just the wrong way. Rubs 'em wrong, makes 'em confront their feelings. Now, maybe I'm supposed to let you figure that out on your own, but I've been doing this a real long time. As long as it gets. And I reckon you're going to wear me out faster if I'm not straight with you.

"I can't tell you how to get out of here, Hanzo. But I can promise you that you will figure it out- everyone does in the end. And then... you're off to who knows where. I don't know what comes next- not in my job description, y'see. Me, I'm eternal just like this place all around you, but you- you're changeable. You're not a lost cause. No one is. In all my time working here, I've never seen anyone too lost to get out. By all rights, that's what this place is for- people who can be saved. If you were beyond hope, you wouldn't have come here in the first place."

"I do not need to be 'saved,'" Hanzo spat, as if trying to dislodge the word sitting unpleasantly on his tongue. "I don't need your pity, McCree."

"Well that's good, because I ain't offering it." McCree flicked an invisible piece of dust from his boot.

"Then why can you not go and bother someone else?"

The demon laughed, and Hanzo jolted, startled by the sound of merriment in the dead landscape. "Oh, I will, the moment you're gone. There's always someone like you for me, Hanzo."

"'Like me'? What do you mean by that?"

"Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Of course."

"Well, then, don't say I didn't warn you," McCree said, and he pulled from his pocket another already lit cigar, and brushed it off like it wasn't already smoldering. "Uptight. Conditioned. Disciplined. Hiding a great deal of pain. Everything I'm not, you see? That's how us 'demons' work here. If you were jovial, you'd get a serious demon, and so on."

He should have felt offended, but in spite of himself, curiosity won over. Hanzo found himself asking, "Then you are always this... cowboy... for everybody?"

"Everybody serious enough to be assigned to me, yeah. Sometimes I look a little different. This cowboy look has only existed for as long as cowboys have, because it wouldn't make a lick of sense to be like this for some Roman fellow. I reckon you just don't like cowboys much."

"I hate westerns."

"Bingo."

A smile tugged involuntarily at his lips, and he turned his head away from the cowboy to hide it, looking out instead over the dead landscape. "Then there is nothing I can do to leave this place faster?" he asked finally. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw McCree shake his head.

"Naw. But it'll get more interesting the more ready to be interested you are. Can't say how long it'll be. My last took- let's call it forty years, for the sake of reference. Don't repeat that incredulously, you heard me the first time."

Sulkily, Hanzo bit down the incredulous exclamation. "How old are you?"

"Don't rightly know. But I'm the oldest one left, I reckon. So far as I can tell, we fade when we're old enough, get replaced by new ones. That just ain't happened to me yet."

Hanzo looked back at him. The demon didn't seem old by any human signs. If he had met McCree on the street, he would have assumed him to be in his late thirties. He was scruffy, certainly- to contrast Hanzo's meticulous grooming?- but he seemed healthy and well-built. Hanzo even supposed, _objectively_ , that he might be considered attractive. By some people.

McCree noticed him staring and winked. Hanzo looked resolutely away again. "Does this place always look like a bad western, or is just for my benefit?"

"Your benefit, mostly. It'll start looking different the farther we go, especially if we run into some people. And the people I'm with, they tell me it starts to look nicer."

Hanzo frowned. "Not to you?"

The demon didn't answer right away. He took his hat off, placing it carefully on the ground beside him, and ran a hand through his uncombed hair. It framed his cheekbones in a way that made Hanzo distinctly uncomfortable. "Naw, not to me," he said at last, and took a drag from his cigar. "I'm unchanging, remember? The most change I do is physical. When you start seeing different from me, I'll know you're close to not needing me anymore."

"Do you get lonely?" The question fell from his lips before he could stop it. He wasn't sure what had prompted him to ask, and judging from McCree's startled expression, he hadn't expected it either.

The demon considered it for a moment,turning his black eyes to the black void above. "Well, Hanzo, let me ask you something. Did you get lonely in your life? You held no one close enough to be a friend. And your family didn't want you, after the death of your brother- though maybe you didn't want them."

Hanzo said nothing. It was true in the vaguest sense, but he would not give the demon the satisfaction of defensiveness. He did not owe McCree an explanation. He sat straight, and stared ahead.

"Me, I reckon I do get lonely from time to time. I get real attached to some of these people," McCree went on, heedless of Hanzo's inner turmoil. "I'm only human, after all- if you'll pardon my little joke. You see 'em turn into something great before you, and then they're gone, off to somewhere better, and you're back where you started. Suppose that's why my colleagues fade after a time; they just get tired.

"But I ain't ready to hang my hat up yet, Hanzo," he added, and swept his ridiculous hat back onto his head for emphasis. "I daresay we've got a ways to go with you, but I ain't never given up on someone before." He stood, popping a few joints as he went, and then closed the distance between them and held out his hand to help Hanzo up. "What do you say, ready to keep going?"

Hanzo narrowed his eyes. McCree wiggled his fingers suggestively, and kept his hand out, so at last he relented and took it to stand.

The jolt that went through him at the contact made him gasp, and for a wonderful, blessed moment, Hanzo could _breathe_ again. Stamina surged through his body, making him light-headed and threatening to send him to the ground again. McCree, too, seemed to feel something: He stared back at Hanzo with wide eyes, his cigar falling from his mouth and disappearing before it hit the ground.

The sensation faded as quickly as it come, despite still clinging to the demon's hand. McCree cleared his throat, released him, and then tapped his hand again- but the strange feeling didn't return, and Hanzo's body returned to its deadened state. Stepping hurriedly back, Hanzo shook out his hand, mourning the loss of energy.

"Well. That's interesting," McCree remarked, staring down at his own hand. "Never had that happen before. Reckon we'll have to keep an eye on that."

"What was it?"

"No idea. Hm." McCree took on a rather contemplative look for a moment, and then shook his head, dismissing whatever thoughts he had been having. "Ready to hit the road, then?"

"There are no roads."

"You sure are a bucket of cheer, partner. Lead the way."

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be a slower burn than I thought. We've got so many people to meet still!
> 
> Come say something to me at http://tea-nettles.tumblr.com/.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *loooove* your comments. You guys are so unbelievably sweet. Keeps me going.

They walked.

Hanzo had been right, of course- there were no roads, nothing but the flat grey expanse. And yet, the longer he walked, the more the landscape started to change. Only a little at a time, it began to rise and fall until it was small rolling hills as far as the eye could see. It put him in mind of a golf course, though it remained colorless and unbroken.

If nothing else, he appreciated it for the literal change of pace it offered. A small part of him wished he could become fatigued by the endless up and down, to feel the ache in his calves from climbing, but his body remained as constant and unchanging as ever.

A thought struck him, as they climbed their two hundred and twelfth hill. He glanced back at McCree, who had been reasonably silent for at least a hundred hills. "Can you see this?" he asked.

The demon focused on him, and looked startled. "See what?"

"The hills. You said I would start to see things you could not."

McCree's expression eased. "Oh, yeah. I can see 'em. You had me worried a second there, Hanzo. Thought you might be fixing to leave already."

Hanzo snorted. He faced forward again, and quickened his pace somewhat, though it never helped. "If I could leave, I would."

There was a warm chuckle behind him. The sound seeped into his chest and hovered there. "I don't doubt it," McCree said, casual as ever. "But you've got some things to do still, I reckon."

"What kind of things?"

"Dunno. Some folk are sent here for a purpose beyond figuring themselves out. You've got some hurt in you, but you're not as poor off as most. You might be here to meet someone, to help them along as you help yourself."

The idea didn't sit well in his mind, and Hanzo found himself frowning. "Isn't that your job? That is why the demons exist, is it not?"

"In a manner of speaking. We're mostly here to jump-start the introspection."

"I did not need you to-" Hanzo began, fully prepared to snap at the demon, but as they crested the next hill he forgot what he had been saying.

In the little valley below- if you could call it such a thing, with an elevation change of barely five feet- there was a little white vase holding a stick of celery. It was exactly like the one that had been on the beside table in the room he had first woken up to: Just as bland and strange as the rest of the world around them.

It also alarmed him. He felt unusually unsettled by it, as though some hidden fight or flight instinct had kicked in. "McCree!" he snapped. "Do you see that?" He pointed at it, and he was horrified to find that his hand was trembling, so he dropped it as quickly as it had been raised.

McCree came to hover over his shoulder, examining the area before them. "Sure. Interesting bit of celery you got there. You'll start finding things like that as you go along. Fragments of things. They could represent something, or they could be nothing." He glanced at Hanzo, saw the stiffness in his demeanor he couldn't quite suppress in time. "Something troubling you?"

"No," Hanzo spat, though it was the most obvious of lies. He wrenched his eyes away from the vase and stormed down the hill, veering to the left to avoid the little valley completely. McCree followed, closer to him than before.

The demon didn't say anything, but Hanzo supposed he must have done his job, because he couldn't stop thinking about what he had seen. There was no reason, no reason at all, that he should feel so strongly about a _stick of celery_ in a vase. He had no strange phobia nor association with the plant. It was bland and boring, like the rest of the plane he found himself in. But now he was jittery, paranoid, and he _hurt_. His heart ached, ached with a feeling he couldn't quite place but didn't want to.

All he knew was that he wanted to get as far away from the plant as he could. Head down, he doubled his walking speed, watching his own feet blur as he took step after step in the wretched wilderness.

The light changed. A thin shadow covered his shoes and the ground around them, and Hanzo looked up and screeched to a halt. He was hardly two feet from a stone wall that rose at least two stories. It certainly hadn't been on the horizon before, and he couldn't imagine he had walked that far at all.

He took a few steps back, vaguely aware that McCree had stepped tactfully out of the way to allow him to do so. As his vision adjusted, he realized he was standing in the shadow of a building instead, this side utterly blank. To his right, mostly hidden still by the first building, was another, separated by the first thing resembling a road he had seen in his time there. It wasn't really a road such as he had known in life; it was cobbles, old cobbles, and poorly laid at that. Possibly to match the sparseness of the landscape, they were clustered together awkwardly in some places and thin on others. Everything, from the road to the buildings to the grass around them, was just as grey as the rest of the place.

He turned to look at McCree. McCree grinned at him, which he still found unsettling with the eyes.

Turning back, he followed the side of the building until he was on the cobblestone. It was actually a unit in row of townhouses, all grey, all vaguely European in styling. Each had a little garden in the front, carefully gated, though nothing was growing. The side across the street was a mirror image of the first. Much like the old west town he had seen before, it was small- perhaps no more than ten houses on either side- and ended abruptly, like a movie set.

"What is this place?" he asked. The demon stepped up to his right and looked around.

"Don't rightly know, but if I were to guess, I'd say it were signs of another person," was the amiable reply. "They might still be around here, if you go look."

The idea was... tempting. Though not usually one for company, Hanzo found himself yearning for another human in this dead world. Someone to commiserate with, if nothing else. Maybe he was destined to 'help' this person, or they him. Wordlessly, he set off down the street, looking for a sign.

It came to him in the form of an open gate. Whereas all the other gardens were closed, a gate to his right was open, as was the door to the house. It looked just the same as the rest around him, but Hanzo went towards it instinctively. McCree, naturally, followed close behind.

Though it had resembled a double-story townhouse on the outside, it was a single large room on the inside. There were no windows, but the wall to his left was filled floor to ceiling with a long mirror, and a ballet bar ran across it. In the far corner, near a radio that was playing no music, were two figures.

The first was long and lithe- the once who fit here, he supposed, because she was dancing gracefully in the silence. She was dressed in white like he was, though her outfit was a kind of jumpsuit more appropriate to ballet. Her hair- was it blue?- was bound up into a tight bun, though wisps escaped from the side and softened her face.

The second figure, Hanzo thought, must be the demon. The giveaway was the color: Though dim, like McCree's coloring, her leggings were orange and stood out against the grey of her surroundings. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching the dancer intently.

The dancer went through a flourishing finale, and the demon clapped enthusiastically, breaking the silence. "That was brilliant, Amélie!" she shouted, and Hanzo wondered, with a trace of amusement, whether the demon was especially loud because the dancer was naturally quiet.

And as he thought, McCree stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Well howdy there, ladies," he said, tipping his ridiculous hat. "That was a mighty fine performance, Amélie."

"Thank you," the dancer murmured, dropping her eyes. Even as Hanzo watched, she seemed to draw back into herself, and the demon beside her looked annoyed.

"McCree, is this a new one? Who are you dragging about the place now?" she asked, in a piping British accent, and McCree laughed.

"Lena, this is Hanzo. Hanzo, Lena," he replied, placing a hand on Hanzo's shoulder and steering him closer. Hanzo found himself too disappointed by a lack of jolting energy to resist. "Lena's not been around as long as some, but she's a firecracker."

Lena tried to look annoyed, but it didn't hold; she grinned suddenly, wide and bright. Her eyes were like McCree's, completely black. "I've got loads of things I could call you, Jesse. 'Ere, Amelie, turn down the music so you can hear all about the things I could call him-"

She and McCree bantered on, but Hanzo found himself focusing on Amelie, who had gone as suggested to turn down a dial on the radio. She was humming as she did so, a slow and melancholy song. "Are you hearing music?" he asked of her, suddenly, and she looked at him with a strange intensity. 

"Oui. Can you not hear it?" she murmured, and motioned for him to come closer. "It is... silent for Lena as well, though she tells me no demon can hear music here." She turned the dial back up, and Hanzo strained to hear something, but there was nothing, not even static.

He shook his head, disappointed, and she gave him a soft little smile. "Do not worry, mon cher. I couldn't hear it either, in the beginning. But it came, in time. This was Gerard's favorite song."

She said the name wistfully, with such reverence, and in life Hanzo would not have asked. But here, it seemed important to know. "Gerard?"

"My late husband," she replied, dream-like, her eyes focused on something far away. "He was handsome, sophisticated, so strong. We were made for each other, I think. But I killed him."

Hanzo stared at her. She caught his gaze, and her smile was heartbreaking. "I was not myself at the time. I know this now. I forgive myself only because I know he forgives me. I am well again, and I can see him now. He's waiting for me. Gerard..."

She reached a pale hand out to the air before her, letting it hang in the space between them. It seemed to Hanzo that she no longer saw him at all, and he rolled his shoulders uncomfortably and stepped back, turning towards the demons. To his surprise, he found both of them standing in silence, their eyes on him. He hadn't even realized they had stopped talking.

"What?" he asked stiffly, and it broke the both of them out of their trance. Lena smiled at him, and McCree grinned at Lena, and everyone seemed to breathe again- for all the good it did them in this airless place.

"Well, I reckon we should be off," McCree said, tipping his hat once more. "It was nice talking to you ladies. Lena, you keep it up, I reckon you're almost there."

"Cheers, love!" was Lena's reply, giving him a two-fingered salute. "Come see me again when I get a new one."

"Will do," McCree said, and took the lead for once, his ridiculous boots echoing on the wooden floor as he ambled out. Hanzo followed in silence.

 

The street was the same as they had left it, and McCree waved him forwards and carefully closed the door to the townhouse after them. "Now, that right there," he drawled, "was what it looks like when someone's about to pass over, so to speak. She was almost gone, did you notice?"

"It was... unsettling," Hanzo found himself admitting. "Like a mental illness."

McCree chuckled. "Just the opposite, really. She weren't all right in the head before, but Lena's been working patiently with her for... oh, I reckon twenty years or so. And Amélie's been working on herself, of course. She blamed herself for the death of her husband, but dollars to donuts she'll be with him again someday, and things will be better for it."

Hanzo swallowed thickly. "And she will just... fade away?"

"Something like that. I don't rightly know, but they tell me you start to see things on the other side, when you're finally at peace. I've seen people fade in and out of it for months, sometimes, but usually it's a day or two at most."

"That's appalling," Hanzo muttered, trying not to look as uncomfortable as he felt. The idea of slipping in and out of lucidity was deeply unnerving. He had always prided himself on his rigid control, and to become that strange, dreamy thing... he wouldn't do it.

"No," McCree said, with a softness that startled him. He turned to look at the demon, who looked back at him with an expression so gentle it hurt. "No, it ain't, Hanzo. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, every time. It's true peace, when none of you hurts anymore, and you have everything to look forward to. I don't know what it's like, but I wish every time I could taste it, even for a moment. You don't realize how lucky you are."

"You know nothing about me," Hanzo argued, trying to escape the intensity of McCree's gaze.

"I know everything about you, partner. That's kind of the point," McCree said, and Hanzo had the irrational wish that the demon would get annoyed or snap back, instead of maintaining this calm jovial exterior. "It's gonna happen to you, I can promise you that. But I can also promise you you're not all addled when it happens. Amélie, she was just learning to be herself again, and for her it's like... like sinking into a soft bed after a very hard day. I mean, you can't tell me you'd like to feel like _this_ for the rest of your life."

Wordlessly, Hanzo shook his head. He didn't want to be drugged, the way Amelie had seemed, but this dead feeling was unbearable at times. He wanted to breathe again, like he had in life, like he had when McCree had touched him. He didn't want to forget the feeling of being _real_.

"McCree," he said lowly, and McCree cocked his head in a silent query. "Do you feel... lifeless, like the people you are partnered with?"

Once again, McCree looked surprised at the idea that he would be forced into introspection of his own. "That's a good question," he muttered, rubbing his real hand over his scruffy cheeks. "I don't rightly know, having never felt anything else, but I don't think I'm quite so bad as you folk feel when you first get here."

"Then... when you took my hand, before, what did you feel?"

McCree hummed, and then shrugged. "I'm not sure. It felt different. Probably nice if it weren't so startling. Like a rush of something all up and down. I was buzzed on it for a good long while afterwards."

"...Really?"

"Sure enough. Now, I ain't never been tipsy, on account of not having alcohol here, but I'd reckon that's what it would feel like."

Hanzo frowned at him. "You didn't say anything."

"Thought I'd better mull it over for a while," McCree said, and shrugged again. "Haven't come to any conclusions yet."

Hanzo found, to his great surprise, that the townhouses and cobblestones had disappeared. They were alone again in the grey wasteland, though the rolling hills remained. They had been standing still in the center of the little townhouses, and he supposed he must have been more caught up in the conversation than he had thought if he hadn't noticed their absence. That was... strange.

He glanced back at McCree, who only smiled in his usual irritating fashion.

So, to wipe the smile off his face, Hanzo held out his hand. It worked. McCree looked down at it, and said, "Er."

"Well?"

"Well what?" the demon asked, not touching him.

"Do you not want to see if it happens again?"

"I touched you earlier," McCree pointed out. "Nothing happened."

"You grabbed my shoulder through my clothes. It's possible it only works skin to skin." Those words alone conjured up some horrifying ideas that Hanzo quickly squashed.

McCree looked at his hand a while longer, and then hesitantly took it.

The effect was instantaneous. Hanzo _felt_ again, felt his heart beating and air in his lungs and the warmth of McCree's tanned hand in his own. McCree's grasp tightened and he _gasped_ , the most natural sound Hanzo had heard the demon make in the time he had been there.

As before, it lasted only a moment, a few full breaths, before it began to fade away. His senses dulled, his breathing, though unlabored, brought no more satisfaction.

McCree let go first, and Hanzo noticed that his cheeks were flushed. The demon grinned, suddenly, so bright and pure that Hanzo couldn't help but smile back, just a little. "That," McCree said, "was something else. Hoo boy, do I feel kickin'. I dunno what that is, Hanzo, but I can tell you right now I've never had that happen with anyone else. Something special about you, huh?"

Hanzo tried to suppress the small swell of pride at his words. He hadn't really done anything, after all. "Why do you suppose it only works sometimes?"

McCree tapped his hand once again, and then shrugged when nothing happened. "Got to cool down a little, I reckon. I'll have to ask someone about that, see if anyone's got any idea about it. You ready to head out?"

 

Hanzo wasn't ready, because it was pointless, but they struck out again anyway, wandering up and down the endless grey hills.

Neither of them noticed when their hands drifted together, but each felt a little lighter because of it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter now, for a slightly longer chapter later. I'm not good at breaking things up.

And so time went on- at least in theory. At some point in the time stream Hanzo realized McCree had a definite concept of time, and with further questioning, an acute sense of it.

"I ain't telling you how long you've been here, so don't ask," McCree had said, quickly shutting down that line of questioning.

"How long has it been since we saw Amélie?" Hanzo asked instead. Around them, the prairie was turning sandier, more like grassy knolls at a beach. No matter their surroundings, Hanzo's plan outfit stayed meticulously white and dull, and the fact that the sand wouldn't stick to his shoes was the most interesting thing to happen within recent memory.

"About two days," was the demon's reply. Hanzo nodded. It made sense; he had no real concept of time in this place, but it hadn't felt like too long ago.

Then, some great distance later, Hanzo asked, "How long since I last asked the time?"

And McCree had said, "Two months."

He stared at the demon, aghast, searching for some sign of a joke. McCree knocked some ash off his cigar, and smiled wanly at him. "You are joking," Hanzo accused.

"Might be, might not be. You're too fixated on time, darlin'. This place don't exist in the same time as the place you came from. We've stepped out of that particular stream." McCree clapped a hand on his shoulder once, and brushed Hanzo's neck for the briefest moment with his thumb. Hanzo knew it wasn't an accident, but he said nothing about it, just closed his eyes and savored the rush of life that coursed through him.

 

Soon the landscape was a desert in earnest, the dunes rising far above their heads, their feet leaving tracks in the sand. They would reach the top of a dune, and Hanzo would look back at the grey sands and pitch sky, and see his footprints disappearing from view miles and miles away.

And along with the sand came the memories.

It had started when Hanzo had nearly tripped over something half-buried. McCree reached out to help him, but Hanzo waved him off and knelt to dig the offending item out of the dune. His fingers uncovered a piece of broken ceramic, curved and dark blue. He already knew what he would find when he dusted it off: part of a pink lotus painted on the inside. It was a fragment of his mother's favorite bowl.

He stood, cradling the shard in his hands. His mother had not been a sentimental person, but the bowl was her favorite possession, passed on by his grandmother. Silently, the demon prowled closer, leaning into Hanzo's personal space to look. "Something special, Hanzo?"

"Not to me," Hanzo murmured, though he could not drop it. "It was my mother's."

"Sure is a pretty little thing. Pity it's broken."

He huffed, even as his eyes roamed hungrily over it. "Genji and I nearly broke it, in our youth. He had snuck into her room- for what purpose, I do not remember. He coerced me into coming, which was foolish."

"Children are like that."

"He scared one of her cats, who crashed into the table that held it. We watched it waver on the edge for what felt like ages before it settled. Genji pushed it back into place and we never went in there again." He felt the broken edge of the ceramic. "I am certain she loved this bowl more than us."

"That's a lot of love for a bowl," McCree remarked.

"No. Simply a lack of love for us," Hanzo said, and he turned and flung the piece as far away as he could. It arched over a dune and disappeared from sight.

"Not exactly a happy little family, were you?" McCree asked.

Before, the question might have irritated him, but as the bowl had left his grasp, so had some small weight he didn't know he had been carrying. He only sighed, and turned his back on it, looking to the identical land ahead. "We had many pressing concerns. There was little time for anything else."

"Then I have good news for you, Hanzo," the demon said, suddenly cheery. "You have all the time in the world now."

Hanzo considered the use of a rude gesture at McCree's smug expression, but decided it was beneath him.

 

More items began to appear in the sand as they walked.

There had been a broken alarm clock, and Hanzo could see McCree gearing up for another joke about time, so he pointed sharply at him and said "No," as one might to a rambunctious puppy. McCree pursed his lips and stayed silent, but gave him an outrageous wink. 

"I don't know what this has to do with me anyway," Hanzo said, kicking some sand over the clock.

McCree shrugged. "Some of them don't mean anything at all."

 

But some of them did. They came across a little green teapot resting neatly on top of a white doily on the sand. Hanzo knew without a doubt that he had never seen the teapot before in his life, but it felt like the celery had before; his stomach churned, his chest seized, and he stalked away from it before McCree could say another damnable word. To his relief, McCree said nothing at all for a while, and he was able to brood over it in peace.

 

The... _things_ became more frequent. There was a book he had loved as a child. The necklace of a girl he had liked, back when he had time for such things. A hat with no relation to anything he knew. A tiny cactus that wrenched the horrible feelings out of him again. Soon every couple of steps brought another scrap or piece of junk. Something shattered under foot, and he cursed and extracted his feet from a broken doll.

When he lifted his gaze again, there was a mountain of lost things before him. A true garbage heap, the size of one of the dunes around them, grey and yet filled with colors he didn't want to see. It dominated the surrounding landscape, became all he focus on and all he wanted desperately to leave behind. The more he tried to walk around it, the more he found the items crushed underfoot and pressed into the sand beneath him. Every time he tried to steer to the side, the world spun and he found himself ascending the hoard of memories.

He stopped walking then, frustrated and angry, and looked to McCree for help. The demon stood a few feet back, a little lower on the heap than he was, and he seemed to get a sense of the question that Hanzo was forming. "Some things in life you can't avoid, Hanzo," he said softly. "I reckon you're going to have to climb the damn thing if you want to get over it. Don't you worry now, I'll be right here for you the whole way."

"I will not be subject to your foolish tests," he snapped, though even as he lashed out he knew the demon wasn't at fault. It was this _place_ , not McCree, and Hanzo felt ashamed for snarling at the only thing that even pretended to care about him anymore.

"I'll be here," McCree repeated, just as gentle as before. "Go on now. I'll watch your footing for you."

So, with no other option, Hanzo began to climb.

He found his bow in there, though the string had snapped and the frame was impossibly bent. He had grabbed it instinctively, but when he saw the condition it was in he let it fall. There were other weapons in the pile as well; he recognized the hilt of a sword his father had treasured, and he kicked at it as he passed. It was petty of him, but he couldn't deny that he felt better for it.

There was a robe that the Shimada clan elders had frequently worn. An earpiece from one of the guards. A knife resting on the top of a stuffed elephant he had possessed before he had been able to walk.

And worst of all, there was _green_. All the other colors seemed to fade around the green. Little things, harmless things, green things that twisted his heart and wrested it from his chest. A little bonsai growing out of a pile of broken glass. A green pen, poised upright on a piece of grey paper. A blank green book that he slipped on, cursing as his knees hit the mountain of junk.

He knew what was coming now. The top was in sight, steep but just a few feet away, and ever fiber of his being wanted to go away, to avoid it, to run.

And suddenly, there he was, on the top of a mountain of things from his old life. The desert spread out for miles around him, the mountain of garbage seeming higher from up there than it did on the ground.

And there on the peak, resting in the dead center and more colorful than anything else around it, was a tiny ceramic dragon of the brightest green.

He seized it, turned, thrust it in McCree's face. "This is it?" he snarled, trying to summon up any ounce of anger and feeling he could force out of his lifeless body. "This is what you are trying to get me to relive, McCree? As if living it the first time were not enough! Was that why you brought me to Amelie, to commiserate with someone who had also _murdered family?_ "

The demon didn't answer, his face shadowed under the brim of his hat, eyes two bottomless pits in his blank expression. Hanzo hated his reaction, hated that the demon was so smug in his own position, unaffected by anything he said. "What good have you done me, McCree?" he yelled, his voice cracking a little from disuse. "What good do any of you do, bringing us to this empty hell and reminding us of our pain? I did not choose this and I do not want any of it. Not this place, not these reminders, not you."

Again, McCree said nothing, and Hanzo saw red. Balling his hand around the tiny dragon, he swung a fist at the demon's face.

He was unprepared for the reaction. Before he could blink, McCree had caught his fist in one hand, stopping the blow before it hit. He was immovable, hard as stone, and Hanzo found himself unable to pull back so much as a hair until McCree let him go of his own volition. He tried again, a sharper strike this time, and again McCree blocked it as if it were nothing, as if he were more skilled in martial arts than any of the masters Hanzo had fought.

There was no dignity to be found in this place, Hanzo knew, so he turned on his heel and he ran.

It hardly seemed to help. There was no relief or joy from running. He flew down the other side of the mountain of trash, junk scattering underfoot, but there was no wind on his face and his movements felt sluggish, as in a dream. Perhaps that was all this place was, a dream. Maybe he hadn't died, but was in some kind of coma, in a hospital somewhere in Japan.

His feet hit the sandy ground again, and he kept going, running because there was no exertion, no fatigue to be had. His hand was still wrapped around the little green dragon, and try as he might he couldn't cast it away, so kept going regardless of it. He ran, and he ran.

 

When he stopped, it was only because he had calmed enough to realize it was getting him nowhere. Though he had long ago lost sight of the pile of things, the landscape around him remained the same as always. There was no point in this, he knew. By its very definition, this place was pointless.

So instead, he settled down on the ground. His hand was red from where he had gripped the little dragon, but it faded quickly, and he wondered if it was impossible to get injured in this place. By all rights running down the side of the trash mountain should have sent him sprawling to the ground, broken and bruised, but instead he had kept going. Maybe it was so people couldn't kill themselves to get out of this place early.

The longer he sat there, the more he regretted his outburst. He ran his fingers over the little dragon, feeling the edges and grooves in the ceramic; it was finely made, with little whiskers that hadn't snapped in the chaos. And it hurt to look at, it hurt terribly, but now he knew why, and that was easier. He felt like crying, but either it was impossible to cry in this place, or it was impossible for _him_ to cry anymore.

Hanzo lay back in the sand, raising the dragon above him, a little glimmer of green against the void. He would wait there, he supposed, until McCree caught up with him. Distantly, he knew he owed the demon an apology, though no part of him felt like apologizing for being put in purgatory against his will. Regardless, he waited.

But McCree never came.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this chapter because a lovely reader pointed out that it was a little disjointed.
> 
> In all fairness, my writing is naturally disjointed, but in this case it was because somewhere in the writing process I accidentally deleted a chunk of conversation. Oops. 
> 
> No more writing two hours past my bedtime.

Hanzo was used to being alone.

He had always found the saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder" to be ridiculous. For ten years he had had no contact with the Shimada clan and his former life. He found their absence in his life to be necessary, a relief. Clearly they didn't miss him either, since they kept sending assassins after him.

When it came down to it, he had never had anyone in his life that he cared enough about to miss when they were gone. He and Genji had never been close. His brother had always been a thorn in his side.

He would have filed McCree away into the 'thorn' category as well, in the beginning. He didn't like this grinning creature who knew so much about him, who was by his very nature meant to oppose him in every way. He had wished him gone frequently in their trek across the wasteland of purgatory.

And then McCree _had_ gone. Hanzo wasn't sure how long the demon had been away, now. Long enough for Hanzo's anger to dissipate. Long enough for him to relive what he had done to Genji a thousand times. Long enough for the guilt and anguish to subside somewhat, until it was just a low and painful throb in his chest with every step he took. When he looked for a place to put the little ceramic dragon, he found a pocket inside his shirt, over his heart, that seemed to be made for that purpose.

He walked on.

The gargantuan dunes of the grey desert began to flatten as time passed- if time passed. Soon it was akin to walking along a beach instead. Up in the distance, Hanzo could see it smooth down altogether, into something more uniform. As he drew near, the sand blurred into the edge of smooth grey tiles that disappeared into the twilight. When Hanzo stepped on them, his footsteps clicked like tap shoes on a polished floor.

It was possibly the most monotonous place yet. In the prairie, the grass had at least been irregular enough to be almost interesting. Soon Hanzo was surrounded by identical tiles on all sides, a sea of symmetry.

A speck appeared on the horizon. In time it fashioned itself into a tall rectangle, and the closer Hanzo got the more sure he was that it was a tall building of some kind, possibly a skyscraper. The possibility that there might be people there spurred him on; he quickened his pace, half-jogging in his desperation to see someone again.

A tiny, terrible part of him whispered that McCree might be in there, but he knew it wasn't true, and he hated himself for hoping.

But as he got nearer, he saw that there were two figures beside the building. Though all greyish in hue, the outside of the building was glassy and an overhang extended from the front doors, covering a little table and chairs from the nonexistent sun. There was even a bouquet of flowers on the table, though they looked dull and uninteresting to him. The whole place had a kind of sterile quality to it that he hadn't seen in Amelie's area.

There was a woman seated in the chair, with dark skin and flowing black hair. Hanzo noted in a detached sort of way that her posture was impeccable; she was as poised like a diplomat, not a fighter. In contrast to her, there was a small man with dreadlocks sitting on the table, slouching. It was immediately obvious to see which was the human; the woman wore a plain white pantsuit, the man had a tightly fitted green shirt with a frog logo and baggy cargo pants. He had some kind of blocky thing on his hip, and his feet were encased in... roller blades?

They were in deep conversation as he approached, though the man caught sight of him as he drew near and gave him a friendly wave. By the time he was close enough to hear what they were saying, the woman had stopped talking and was eyeing him critically. He stopped just short of the overhang, uncertain suddenly of what to do.

The woman spoke first. "Greetings," she said primly, just as the demon on the table let out a happy "Hello, hello!" The woman winced a little, and pursed her lips.

"Hey man, what's your name?" the demon asked. "I'm Lúcio, this is Satya."

"Is this man a test of some kind?" Satya asked Lúcio, who grinned and shook his head. Hanzo was reminded painfully of McCree's equally black-eyed grin.

"Nah, you know me better than that, Satya. You're too suspicious," the demon exclaimed, and then turned his attention back to Hanzo. "So what's your deal, man?"

There was a bewildering moment in which Hanzo tried to figure out how to respond to that. "I'm Hanzo," was what he finally settled on, shifting rather uncomfortably. Satya continued to eye him as if she were measuring everything from his height to his hairline.

"Nice to meet you, Hanzo," was Lúcio's cheery reply, and he hopped down from the table. Hanzo was surprised to note that the demon was shorter than he was, even with the roller blades. "You all alone out here? Met your follower yet?"

"My-? Oh, yes," Hanzo replied reluctantly. He found himself reluctant to discuss McCree, which was foolish, considering this might be the only chance to find out where McCree might have gone. "He called himself McCree. He... disappeared, a while ago. I'm not sure how long it has been."

"Oh man, no way!" Lucio yelled, and Hanzo wondered if all demons were supposed to be outrageously loud. "Hey, Satya! Hanzo's got _McCree_ following him around, can you believe it?"

"I heard."

"McCree's the best," the demon plowed on, shifting back and forth excitedly on the blades. "He's, like, _super old_. Everyone's wondering why he hasn't gone off yet. He's taken care of more humans than most of us combined! ...Where'd you say he went?"

"I don't know," Hanzo gritted out. "He's just gone."

"Huh, now that's just weird," Lucio mused, and Hanzo's heart sank. If this was unusual for a demon to do, there was no telling where he had gone. "Maybe he finally faded! That happens so quick, you see a guy one day and barely thirteen years later he's completely vanished. I don't think I've _ever_ heard it happen in the middle of a gig, though. Usually they go out right as their last person cleared."

Something icy had gripped Hanzo's heart as Lucio spoke. Perhaps McCree finally had done this... fading. The thought was uncomfortable, and became more unbearable the more it ran through his head. McCree had been relatively vague about why demon's did this 'fading' in the first place, but if anything would trigger it, it could very well have been Hanzo's words. Maybe it was when demons didn't feel they were needed anymore, or when a human outright rejected them...

"Please _turn that noise down_ ," Satya said suddenly, and Hanzo jolted and looked around. There was no noise that he could place, but the more he thought about it, the more he could feel... something. A vibration in his bones. A beat.

"Oops, sorry," Lúcio said sympathetically, and fumbled around with the box on his waist. Hanzo noticed for the first time that it was a speaker, and an old one at that. One of the 2010 ones pretending to be 1980. "You know I can't hear it when it goes off."

"It gets progressively louder until it begins to vibrate the table," Satya responded, and her words icy. "You know when it reaches a ludicrous volume."

"Well, yeah, if I think about it," was Lúcio's reply, unrepentant. For a moment, Hanzo forgot about his troubles.

"You have a speaker playing music that you can't hear?" he asked blankly.

The demon beamed. "You know it! I like the way I can feel the beat when it gets loud enough. Can't hear it yet?"

"I... no. No demon can hear music?"

"Never heard of one that could. I feel like I'm really missing out, you know? The beat feels _good_. I can tell thirty songs apart just by the beat! Satya here couldn't hear it at first, but now it's starting to bother her."

"I am not bothered. But it is hardly conducive to concentration."

Hanzo listened to them talk, and a wave of sadness crept up and flung itself over him quite suddenly. The banter, the irritation, was very familiar; the dynamic was similar to his and McCree's. He hadn't realized how necessary his own companion had become until he had vanished, and without a buffer between himself and his own thoughts in this infinite landscape he was going to destroy himself bit by bit.

There was suddenly silence. He hadn't realized he had looked away, but when he looked back in search of Satya and Lúcio they were gone. He couldn't find it in him to be angry at the world around him for being so fickle; he was just so very tired. Not physically, of course- he felt as detached and dead from his body as ever, but not lethargic- just mentally.

McCree made it better, that was the problem. McCree had made him feel more alive.

Though the building had disappeared with the pair, the smooth symmetrical tiles still dominated the landscape, cold and bleak under the black sky.

For the moment, he didn't want to even try. He had no more motivation to move, not if the world was going to move around him anyway. He knelt on the ground, hands on his thighs, head bowed. A meditative position, the closest thing he might get to sleep. He concentrated on his breathing, slowed it down easily, sucking in the airless atmosphere for no reason at all.

In. Out.

Calming his mind, letting thoughts of McCree and Genji and his old life and this place run by without recognizing them.

In. Out.

Fading was starting to sound appealing now. Maybe he could fade this way, let the universe take him.

In. Out.

He felt the atmosphere change. Felt the presence before he spoke.

"You all right there, darlin'?"

Hanzo balled his hands into fists. Cracked an eye open. The cowboy was sitting across from him, studying him with wide black eyes as if he had never left, and Hanzo was awash with conflicting emotions.

Rage. How dare he. _How dare_ he just show up like nothing had happened. "Where have you been?" he snarled, both eyes flying open.

"Took a little breather. Gave you a little space," McCree replied, slow and cautious. "You felt like you needed it."

"You left me with no warning!" So McCree had chosen to go, then. The idea did something painful to Hanzo's heart. McCree didn't need Hanzo, after all. Hanzo was a job to him.

"I reckon it was you who left me, there," the demon answered, still careful, still calm. "Didn't seem like you wanted me."

Hanzo was immediately ashamed at his words, and then furious again for feeling ashamed at all, and then-

It was no use. He could sit there and be foolish forever, or he could forget his pride and try to fix things. He was being a child, and letting his emotions get the better of him.

He took a measured breath, though it did nothing to calm him. "Where did you go?" he asked, dropping his eyes to hide from the demon's black gaze.

There was a smile in the demon's voice as he replied. "I reckon I just stopped existing for a bit. A bit like dreaming. I didn't go anywhere, so to speak, but I sure did a lot of thinking."

"I had thought, maybe... you had faded," Hanzo admitted quietly, and McCree chuckled.

"Worried about me, were you?" he asked.

Hanzo took another deep breath, more out of habit than anything. "Yes."

"Oh, come now darlin'," the demon said, softer, and he reached his hand out to rest on Hanzo's knee. Though the lack of direct contact meant there was no jolt of energy, Hanzo clung to the action like a lifeline. "There ain't nothing out here that can send me off before I'm ready, and I sure ain't ready to leave you, not when you're half-baked. No one ever fades before a job is done. Sometimes right after, but not before."

He snorted at that- half-baked, as if he were a frilly cake the demon was working on- but he found himself soothed regardless. "How many of these 'jobs' have you had, McCree?"

There was a pause, and he looked up. The demon tilted his head in a thoughtful way, but his gaze never left Hanzo (as near as he could tell). "Oh, upwards of seven hundred thousand," he decided.

"Seven-?"

"Hundred thousand, yessir. And I remember every single one, don't you worry about that. You're one of the most stubborn for sure."

Hanzo glared at him.

"You see what I mean," was McCree's casual reply.

"You are ridiculous."

"Don't pretend you don't love it, darlin'."

Hanzo didn't deign to answer that, though he suspected his cheeks might be treacherously pink.

"Now, I know you ain't on board with this place," the demon went on, casual as you like. "And I know you ain't always fond of the way I do things. If you'd rather I left you alone more often, I'd respect that. Some people need more space. But see, I reckon this place is just about as much space as a fellow can get, and I know I'd rather spend it with you than do anything else. It's your choice, but I hope you'd choose my company."

The intensity in McCree's gaze was painful, his words so sincere it was unbearable. Whereas Hanzo wanted nothing more than to bottle everything up inside, to suppress all the conflicting emotions and feelings, McCree laid everything about himself open as if it didn't matter in the least. It was alarming, the utter opposite of what Hanzo was conditioned to be.

But he knew it had to change. He had to change, or he would never leave this place.

He stood. Clenched and unclenched his hands. Turned around, took a few jagged breaths for all the good it did. And then, back still turned, he forced himself to be truthful. "I need you with me," he bit out, and it was painful to say, painful to put himself in McCree's hands like that. He felt vulnerable, as if those five little words had bared him completely to McCree.

The demon didn't immediately reply, and the wait felt like eternity. Perhaps it was.

And then big, strong hands- one metal, one warm and soft- wrapped around his stomach, and pulled him gently backwards against McCree. The cowboy rested his chin on Hanzo's left shoulder and nuzzled into his neck; where Hanzo expected to feel the sudden jolt of energy there was only a slow and wonderful warmness, an enveloping sense of comfort. It was the first time someone had touched him, held him, in... he couldn't even remember.

It should have been uncomfortable, but his senses were alight with feeling. There was a smoky scent that could only have been McCree- he had never noticed it before, but it was instantly right. The demon's scruffy beard scratched a little at his throat, but the sensation was new, something different, and left a strange tingling in its wake.

His legs gave out suddenly, as if the infusion of life had reminded them that they were tired. He sagged, and couldn't suppress the thrill that went through him when McCree caught him as if he weighed nothing at all. The demon lowered him to the ground, settled down with him, let Hanzo sit between his legs and rest his back against McCree's chest. Hanzo half-heartedly tried to protest, but there was no real conviction it it; he craved the contact, craved the feeling of something real, and when McCree ran his fingers through his hair he dropped his head back with a groan.

McCree chuckled; Hanzo could feel the rumbling in his chest. "Damn, darlin', you're a sight," he said- purred, really, if Hanzo had to put a name to it. And then he went on, in a more sincere tone, "I'm sorry I went and left you. Thought it best to let things settle down a bit. Guess I was wrong. You're a tricky one, Hanzo- leaving me guessing."

Hanzo hummed vaguely in reply. The demon was still running his fingers through his hair, and he couldn't recall having ever felt this good before. The ongoing connection of energy between the two of them magnified every action, every touch; he knew he must look ridiculous, melting into McCree the way he was, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Hey now, you're getting me all hot and bothered over here," McCree joked- though he pulled back a little, shifted his hips away, and Hanzo realized it might not have been much of a joke at all.

That was... more intriguing than it should have been. Hanzo flushed, and sat upright, pulling away even as his body mourned the loss of contact. When he glanced back, he was gratified to see that McCree looked as dazed as he felt, though the demon gave him a sharp and lopsided grin when he caught him looking.

Slowly, they both got to their feet, helping each other perhaps a little more than they needed to, hands lingering on arms and shoulders. Hanzo found he didn't know what to say, but it seemed McCree had been able to think a little in the past moments; he cleared his throat. "I've got someone I reckon you ought to talk to," he announced. "A fellow who's just finished up his last project. What do you say to me leading for a little while?"

Hanzo took a deep breath, breathed deeply while he was still able, before the spark of life faded completely from him. "Very well."

"I do like your level of enthusiasm, darlin'."

"We will not get anywhere if I let you stand here and talk," Hanzo groused. McCree laughed, and motioned for him to follow.

But this time, they walked side by side.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As per usual, I have no set plans and no way of knowing how long this will be, though there will be more chapters and some minimal plot and definitely some smut. Eventually. Yay demon!McCree!
> 
> I have recently acquired a Tumblr at http://tea-nettles.tumblr.com/. If you want to chat, have a question, or want to point out a typo (please), go say hello over there!


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